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Making Sense of Penal Change

Making Sense of Penal Change

Author: Tom Daems
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199559787
Published In: November 2008
Format: Hardback , 320 pages
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
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Reviews the literature on contemporary punishment and penal change, focussing on the work of four leading scholars- David Garland, John Pratt, Hans Boutellier and Loic Wacquant
Examines the work of the scholars in the context of their lives, analysing how their central ideas are shaped by their experiences and the theories and insights of their time

This book reviews the burgeoning literature on contemporary punishment and penal change, concentrating on the work of four scholars- David Garland, John Pratt, Hans Boutellier and Loic Wacquant. The book differs from classical reviews in that it places the scholars themselves, rather than the problem to be addressed, at the centre of the book. Daems argues that academics do not think and write in a vacuum, they carry a past with them and are influenced by new insights and theories, and constantly need to reposition themselves within their own field and their political environment. This book, then, is as much about the selected authors as the stories they bring. It includes four large chapters devoted to the work of each author, offering an expose of their work framed within the context of their lives. It offers a discussion of their central ideas and their distinctive approach towards questions of penal change and an analysis of the relationship between their roles as scholars in an academic environment and citizens in a political community. The scholar-oriented approach allows the author to deal with questions related to criminology's public persuasiveness - a timely analysis in view of recent calls for criminologists and other social scientists to enter public debate more directly.

This book is an accessible and important contribution to the debate on recent penal change, presented in a way that both experts and non-experts will be able to follow. It will be 2f interest to criminologists, sociologists, socio-legal scholars, and criminal lawyers and students.

Readership: Criminologists, sociologists, socio-legal scholars, and criminal lawyers and students.

1: Making Sense of Penal Change
2: Punishment in a Culture of Control - David Garland
3: The Decivilization of Punishment - John Pratt
4: Punishment and the Fragmentation of Morality - Hans Boutellier
5: Punishment and the Rise of the Penal State - Loic Wacquant
6: Persuasive Criminology

Tom Daems, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Criminal Law and the Leuven Institute of Criminology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

"well-written, and elaborates upon many theoretical concepts with ease" - Jennifer Sloan, Policing Journal